Victorian Lace Cast-on and a Sock’s Disgust

Last night I taught myself the crochet cast-on and started the first striped, wide border of the “Scarf with wide striped border” from Victorian Lace Today. I knit two repeats before I needed to switch to more mindless knitting so M and I could watch Inside Man on DVD (I really liked the movie BTW).

I started with the specified size 7 needles; the yarn is Sea Silk in Berry. The Sea Silk is working pretty well for me on these Clover bamboo needles. Grumperina found Sea Silk sticky and used addi turbos, and others have found it slick and used bamboo. Well, it’s neither sticky nor slick to me. I don’t remember who the slick-finding people are, but I wonder if it is all climate based. It’s dry here but not arid dry. However, I am wondering if I should use size 6 needles instead. I’ve decided to finish this first border before making a conclusion. Any readers opinions are quite welcome!

All this Victorian lace knitting has made the Gingerbread Cable Sock quite peeved. When I said I planned to make its mate my exclusive sock knitting project, it thought I meant exclusive knitting project period. It was very annoyed to find me with the VLT scarf and knitting on the Landscape Shawl (that I can knit while watching a movie). I have passed the 200-stitch row on the LS, so now that seems all down hill as 308 is the number of stitches in the final row before binding off (even though I’m only 44% done).

I did make, what I thought, was significant progress on the second GCS. Here you can see the first sock checking out my progress (8 repeats of 11 done in the cuff).

The GCS was so disgruntled that I was going to work on the LS, that I decided it couldn’t stay in my open sock knitting basket. Rather, it needed a “time-out” in my sock travel bag. Here it is trying to get out before I could zip the bag closed.

I really like the bag. It’s from Target (purchased many moons ago), and it is really a make-up bag. But for sock knitting, it’s perfect. The length is exactly right for my dpns, and they fit in the pocketed top compartment quite nicely.

Finally, I got the bag all zipped up and the GCS into time out.

Perhaps this evening I could take it out and finish the cuff, if it behaves.